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It’s been a tough January

As you’ll recall, the cover cartoon on Charlie Hebdo at the time of the massacre was of novelist Michel Houellebecq, author of the new bestselling novel Submission about the French establishment turning the country over to Islamists to keep Marine Le Pen from becoming president in 2022. Houellebecq bravely showed up at the Cologne book festival last week to promote his book: 270,000 copies have been printed in German. (Germany must be the best big country for authors in the world.)

Houellebecq (pronounced “well-beck”) is never too natty-looking, but it looks like it’s been a particularly stressful month. At right is the more flattering of the two pictures I could find from the Cologne event. (The Guardian’spicture makes him look like he’s been gnawing on human brains.)

The book won’t be published in English until September; hence, reviews in English have been rare so far. Here are two of the first:

… Indeed, whenever Houellebecq gets too serious about political details, the narrative bogs down considerably. Compared to the mathematical computations and personality cults of electoral machination, the protagonist’s regrets at seeing his Jewish girlfriend flee for Israel are far more—how you say?—sexy. Although his wistful parting shot at her, political though it be, breaks your heart for the French: “There is no Israel for me.”

And in an iSteve exclusive, here is commenter Torn and Frayed’s review, complete with tons and tons of spoilers. This is the fullest description of Submission that I’ve seen in English:

As the popularity of the Front National continues to grow in France, the traditional right / left political spectrum is increasingly being pushed to the side in favor of a nationalism vs. globalism analysis. Michel Houellebecq, however, is not following this trend. His latest novel Submission, is firmly planted on the right side of the political spectrum. In his search for political allies, he looks back to reactionary and Catholic writers from the late 19th and early 20th century, mostly from France, although Houellebecq also incorporates ideas from G.K. Chesterton in this frontal attack on the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. And the novel actually features several respectable characters with nativist, far-right identitaire backgrounds.

Set in 2022, this is the story of Jacques, a 40-something professor of literature (he’s an expert on the author Joris-Karl Huysmans) at an elite university in Paris.

While Jacques may sound like Houellebecq’s stand-in, the class differences are probably important: Houellebecq is less a beneficiary of France’s elite production process than is Jacques. The author has a degree in agriculture and then worked in computer network management, so he’s had to scrounge harder than Jacques to become a professional intellectual.

Thus, there may be a certain satirical distance to Houellebecq’s recounting of Jacques’ rapid submission to the new order.

Or is there?

The plot revolves around the ongoing French Presidential elections, which in the second round, pit Marine Le Pen against a new moderate Muslim party led by Mohammed Ben Abbes. As France falls into something approaching a civil war, the media refuses to report on the expanding violence for fear it would only help the Front National; government intelligence agencies actively censor the internet to keep the news of the violence from reaching the masses. As the tensions mount and the election is seen as a toss-up, the mainstream parties, trying at all costs to avoid a Front National victory, start negotiations with the Muslim party and end up making huge concessions on education policy in return for retaining temporary control over other critical ministries.

Jacques spends much of the novel in search of an ideological framework for countering his own loneliness and the atomization of society in general – a structure that would allow all these lonely free-floating atoms, including Jacques, to join together and form a society of stronger molecules. His colleague with an identitaire background, Godfrey Lempereur, relates how his nativist movement struggled to find a unifying thread, passing through phases of Catholicism, royalism, neo-paganism, nationalism, etc, until they finally agreed to focus on the “indigenous” character of their struggle. With this ideological structure, they could resist both Muslim colonization and the undue influence of American multinationals. As indigenous people, they could now picture themselves as following in the footsteps of Geronimo, Cochise, and Sitting Bull in their struggles against foreign colonizers.

In introducing Godfrey Lempereur as an indentitaire, Houellebecq is careful to signal that he is not anti-Semitic. He accomplishes this by among other ways, making Lempereur an expert on Leon Bloy, a reactionary Catholic writer who also happened to be wildly philo-Semitic.

As time goes on the indigenous nature of the struggle is taken up by the Front National. But as the second round Presidential election in 2022 approaches, it becomes increasingly obvious the French political elite is going to join forces with the Muslim Brotherhood party.

The recent Charlie Hebdo marches give us yet another example of real life imitating art: In Submission, the National Front organizes a protest march to protest the betrayal of France to the forces of Islam by the mainstream political elite. But instead of “Je Suis Charlie”, the marchers find an elegant way to highlight their shared ethnicity without resorting to outright hostility by holding banners with the slogan: “Nous Sommes Chez Nous”. While it literally means “we are in our home (land),” what it is really saying is “this is our country and we want to rule it.” Ominously as the march ends, there is a huge outbreak of violence as gunfire erupts around Paris.

As the riots start to spread in Paris, Jacques flees towards the Dordogne region and stops not coincidentally in the town of Martel, which is named after Charles Martel, the grandfather of Charlemagne who saved France from an Islamic invasion back in 732. In fact the Dordogne region embodies all three of potential unifying pillars that Jacques explores: indigenous struggle, Catholicism, and medieval Europe. The nearby Lascaux caves provide, at least symbolically, an ancient ethnic connection for the “old-stock” French.

Rocamadour

In the picturesque medieval cliff village Rocamadour is the pilgrimage church of Notre Dame and its wood carved Black Madonna. Not only does walking the village allow him to contemplate medieval life, but over the course of several weeks Jacques spends many hours alone on a pew in front of the Black Madonna, and on several occasions even feels himself on the verge of a religious awakening. But he never quite gets there. In the end Jacques returns to Paris disappointed and frustrated at still being alone. Once back home his inability to consummate his spiritual relationship with the Black Madonna is mirrored in a series of sexual encounters with various prostitutes where he struggles to reach satisfaction.

Jacques lives in the Parisian version of Chinatown and as instability in Paris grows, he feels safe in his neighborhood and is thankful that the Chinese who dominate the area had the foresight to not “let in any blacks or Arabs.”

Once the political deal is concluded, the French political establishment rallies around Ben Abbes and he goes on to easily defeat the Front National, and becomes the new French President.

French society starts changing soon after the election; women stop working, unemployment goes down, and the economy gets better. Public school is now only offered up until sixth grade, afterwards, all secondary and university education is non-mandatory and private. The incessant violence and criminality in France’s immigrant dominated suburbs called banlieues suddenly drops by a factor of ten. Women start wearing much more modest clothing; the budget is balanced following huge cuts in welfare and education. But the trains do not run on time, and passengers are known to suffer malodorous toilet malfunctions on them.

Jacques’ university is shut down, and when it eventually reopens, he is laid off due to the new requirement that all teachers must be Muslim. And as time goes on, the new President Ben Abbes is able through negotiations to reestablish a sort of Roman Empire by expanding the EU into North Africa and the Mediterranean region. And although countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia jump in to fund elite universities in France, there is continuing tension between their representatives and the more moderate Islamic French leader.

The search for a unifying ideology is only culminated once Islam takes power in France, and it ends up being “distributism”, a third way economic system based heavily on Catholic social teachings from the early 20th century that was championed back in the day by among others, GK Chesterton, whom Houellebecq cites by name. The key tenet of distributism is that while the means of production should remain private, they should be distributed as widely as possible. Distributism looks back on medieval Europe for inspiration as a result strongly opposes both capitalism and socialism, which are each complimentary products of the Enlightenment. The family replaces the state or the multinational corporation as the key institution in society in a distributist regime. In Submission the new Islamic leaders of France, backed by the ideology of distributism and justifying the move with the primacy of the family, slash welfare payments and when combined with the substantial savings already achieved by the cuts in education, are able to easily balance the budget.

The rise of an Islamic regime in France is not at all in conflict with Jacques’ views towards women. For the sexually attractive few, Jacques sees their purpose in life as providing sexual pleasure for men. Once the inevitable ravages of aging set in — once women hit the proverbial wall — they are transformed into “flabby and pendulous” sacks of meat that can never again serve as “objects of desire.”

Look who’s talking.

It is at this point women can graduate to the role of femmepot-au-feu, which is basically a stay-at-home wife who prepares authentic home cooked meals for her man. And as the novel progresses, thanks to the joys of polygamy, the very hottest women may temporarily avoid their cooking role, but eventually all women are expected to submit to the tyranny of their man’s (and family’s) stomachs. This is clearly a novel in which Roissy would find very little to disapprove of concerning gender roles.

Jews are definitely treated kindly in the novel, even if they do tend to disappear from the storyline as Islam takes power. Early in the novel, Jacques cynically comments on how certain colleagues try to get ahead by taking outlandish pro-Palestinian political lines. He also recycles girlfriends each year (he compares them to doing year-long internships), but last year’s fling Miriam, a very hot and sexually talented Jewish girl, has not yet met someone new (as usually happens after the summer break) and so there are still occasional extra-circular activities ongoing between them. After one such session, Miriam even defends the Front National against claims it is still anti-Semitic. But as events evolve and it becomes clear political Islam is coming to power, Miriam’s Jewish family decides to move to Israel. There is a scene in which she is very upset about moving and claims she only feels French, etc. to counteract any thoughts of disloyalty or dual allegiances that might creep up into the reader’s mind.

Jacques comes as close as he is able to actually loving this girl but she eventually departs, and she of course ends up facing even more terrorist violence in Israel. But as time goes on, one ominous sign for Israel is that as the new Muslim leader in France slowly reconstructs the Roman Empire by adding one Mediterranean country after another to an ever expanding European Union, and even as Lebanon and Egypt are being mentioned as potential new members, Israel never comes up for discussion about joining the EU. Implicitly this shows a future Israel surrounded by hostile nations that are aligned not to backwards camel herders in Riyadh, but to sophisticated politicians in an ever more powerful European Union.

Houellebecq is also very generous towards the Front National, even if they also tend to disappear in the second half of the book. Given his views on women above a certain age, it is even more remarkable that at one point he goes so far as to call Marine Le Pen “almost beautiful.”

And even eugenics gets a brief shout-out. The new university President, Muslim convert, and rising political star Robert Rediger is revealed as a former identitarian who has quickly advanced up through the ranks and is becoming one of the ideological leaders of the Islamic movement. Rediger desperately wants Jacques to return to his position at the university so he takes the lead in facilitating Jacques’ conversion to Islam.

Rediger has written a book for converts, Ten Questions about Islam, and when Jacques finally gets around to reading it he quickly skips to the only chapter that really interests him: the one on polygamy.

Male self-confidence can be an amazing thing.

Here it is stated that only dominant males are worthy of reproducing and therefore it is in the interest of the species that these men have priority reproductive access to as many as four woman at the expense of lower status men, many of whom necessarily end up not getting any access to women. A few days later Jacques was surprised to find out that a dorky former colleague who had never even kissed a woman in his life and can only be described as an omega male, had recently converted to Islam, and was now happily married. Jacques complains about this: surely this omega loser was not a “dominant male.” But Rediger sets him straight:

“I can tell you clearly you are wrong about this. Natural selection is a universal principle that applies for all living things, but it takes very different forms. It exists even in plants; but in this case it is related to access to soil nutrients, water, and sunlight. It is clear that man is also an animal; but he is neither a prairie dog nor an antelope. It’s neither claws nor teeth nor how fast he runs that enables man to dominate nature. No, it is indeed his intelligence that does so. So I am quite serious about this: there is nothing wrong with considering university professors as being dominant males.”

Jacques is eventually told given his fairly high status he could look forward to three wives. But a practical question is posed: given all the new modest clothing women are wearing, how will Jacques be able to determine the quality of the various physical attributes belonging to these female candidates for marriage? Rediger explains to him the concept of marriage makers – older women tasked with paring young women to potential husbands — and they get to see the girls naked. These marriage makers take pride in being able to match a girl’s beauty to the status of the potential husband. So the whole “pick-up artist” industry and “game” blogs don’t have much of a future in Islamic France!

They agree to meet at Rediger’s house to discuss his conversion, but in fact Jacques’ decision to convert to Islam occurs at the very beginning of their conversation. As he waits in the public lobby of Rediger’s house, a pretty young teenage girl walks in and quickly covers her face in shame and runs away when she sees a strange man staring at her. It turns out this is Rediger’s new wife Aisha, who “just turned 15”. This is the moment Jacques’ sex organ converts to Islam; it takes a few more days for the rest of his body to get the message.

As the novel goes on, the mystery concerning the identitaire role in the new regime only mounts. There were already questions during the “civil war’ as to the various motivations of the jihadi youth and the identitaires. Since they were almost always hooded, it was hard to tell who exactly was attacking whom and there were debates over which side had more of an interest to disrupt the elections. But slowly it is revealed just how much ideological influence Roger Rediger has on the new Muslim government. The clincher is that next door in Belgium, a new Islamic regime comes to power headed by an ethnic European who has well-known roots in the identitaire movement. In Lenin’s classic Who/Whom framework of power relations, it becomes increasingly clear that far from being the weak and subjective Whom, at least some European far right nativist identitaires are actually on the power-holding Who side of the struggle.

But why would the right-wing nativist indentitaires want to help push Muslim overlords into power in their country? Jacques searches the internet and finds a very interesting article written by none other than Roger Rediger:

The whole article was an appeal to his former identitaire and traditionalist comrades. It’s tragic, he pleaded fervently, that irrational hostility towards Islam prevents them from recognizing the obvious: they were for the most part in perfect agreement with the Muslims. On the rejection of atheism and humanism, on the need for the subordination of women, on the return to patriarchy: their struggles from any point of view were exactly the same. But this fight to establish a new and natural phase of civilization could not now be conducted in the name of Christianity. No, it’s only with Christianity’s newer, simpler, and truer sister religion Islam that this battle could be waged.

Therefore it was Islam which now had to carry the torch. Because of all the dainty rhetoric, cajoling, and shameful stroking by progressives, the Catholic Church could no longer resist moral decadence. It was now unable to clearly and vigorously resist gay marriage, abortion rights and women moving into the workforce. We had to face the facts: the church had reached a repugnant degree of decline. Western Europe was no longer in any condition to save itself – just as ancient Rome had not been able to so the 5th century. The influx of massive numbers of immigrants — who were still under the influence of traditional cultures which not only accepted natural hierarchies, but also obliged both the submission of and respect due to women — was an historic opportunity for a moral and familial realignment of Europe. In fact this opened the prospect for a new golden age on the old continent. While these new immigrant populations were sometimes Christian; but we must admit they were mostly Muslim.

Roger Rediger was the first to admit that medieval Christianity was a great civilization whose artistic achievements remain forever alive in the memory of men. But little by little it lost ground, medieval Christianity was forced to compromise with rationalism and submit to secular power, and by degrees, was doomed. And as to why? Basically, according to Rediger, it was a mystery; God had simply decided it would be so.

Towards the end of the novel Houellebecq does have Roger Rediger weigh in on the nationalism vs. globalism debate:

He came back once again to the failure of communism – which was, after all, a first attempt to struggle against free market individualism. Rediger used the failure to emphasize that Trotsky had been right all along against Stalin: Communism could have only triumphed had it been global. He warned that the same rule applies for Islam: if it is to remain in existence, it must be universal.

While the obvious comparison is with Jean Raspail’s very prescient Camp of the Saints, some French critics have been juxtaposing Submission’s dystopian near future to those described in both 1984 and Brave New World. Some commentators even jokingly refer to the author as “Orhouellebecq” (pronounced Orwell-Beck). But instead of creating yet another version of totalitarianism, what Houellebecq is actually presenting is an inverted social order where a lowly Muslim out-group is able (with the help of some indentitaires) to co-opt the UMPS political elite of capitalists and socialists and create a counter-Enlightenment “Old World Order” that not only returns France to the ancien regime, but looks even further back for inspiration from medieval and even classical European times. And in this somewhat incongruous and even flamboyant reversal of power relations I see, for example, some shades of Planet of the Apes.

After failing spectacularly the first time they tried colonialism, can Europe ever really accomplish an updated mission civilatrice by assimilating all those swarthy masses of immigrants from pre-Enlightenment societies, in a process of inverse colonialism, and somehow magically turn the vast majority of them into secular-loving left-leaning European citizens? The end-game for the first bout of colonialism was fairly straightforward: the white man returned to his homeland and thereafter managed the third world through indirect means such as elite co-option. But for the current bout of inverse colonialism, there are three possible conclusions to the inevitable civil wars that will soon arise in Europe. The first, and most simple conceptually, is to send the unassimilated immigrant masses back to where they came from just as the original anti-colonial movements did to their colonial masters. The second is the gradual Kosovarization of Europe where Muslim minorities gain political control of their no-go banlieues which becomes a sort of “oil-spot” strategy, but for insurgents. And the third is for the entire society to reject the Enlightenment and accept a form of reverse-assimilation in which the prevailing culture slides backwards and accepts immigrant cultural hegemony. Houellebecq demonstrates in Submission that this might not be as bad an option as previously thought — at least for intelligent, right-leaning males of native stock. Just how serious he is about all this is another matter.

I’ve only read Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles or Atomized or whatever it’s called. It was pretty funny, although not in a line by line fashion. But as a piece of deadpan performance art, tied closely to the author’s decaying hangdog appearance (looking as he does like a Charlie Hebdo caricature of himself), it was pretty memorable.

In his search for political allies, he looks back to reactionary and Catholic writers from the late 19th and early 20th century, mostly from France, although Houellebecq also incorporates ideas from G.K. Chesterton in this frontal attack on the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.

This (and much more in the review) really is like taking out a mosquito with a bazooka. You can scorn Putnam for sitting on his data for so long while trying to find the perfect spin to put on it before releasing it, but this kind of overkill is what happens when a society lurches into a u-turn without a carefully planned exit-strategy.

Also, is there a name for this kind of writing? I suppose in the French example it was prefigured by Camp Of The Saints but that was set much further in the future; it was ‘prophetic’ whereas this is ‘predictive.’ The challenge now is for a realistic French liberal writer to cut out the pointless pouting and take up the gauntlet and offer a more benign alternative scenario.

“I think that there is a sharp contrast for most people between life at university, where they meet lots of people, and the moment when they enter the workforce, when they basically no longer meet anyone. Life becomes dull. So as a result people get married to have a personal life. I could elaborate but I think everyone understands.”

Paradoxically that final line, at least in English, likely obfuscated what everyone WOULD have understood had he left it out.

That final line sounds like a modest reference to sex but the man isn't known for being modest about it and likely wasn't referring to it.

Everything in the preceding sentences is just as true for males who went to all-male colleges .

Generally speaking, unless you're high on the food chain, work sucks - and in quite the same way that school sucked for many of the same people while college did not. For the reasons he just presented.

Having just read that synopsis/review, I can say perhaps H’becq is on to something, and here literature is acting as a gateway for truth, and an emninently possible, plausible future.
Of course, the future never unfurls in the narrative that even the most acute and perceptive futurologist writes down – there are way to many non-linearities, pivot-points and to quote a phrase ‘unknown unknowns’ for an any description of a future utopia/dystopia to be anything other than a fantasy fairy tale, but certainly the H’becq scenario is plausible as all the ingredients which lead his future time actually exist. It’s just a question of how those ingredients are mixed and of the native cunning and lucky breaks of the ‘cooks’ blending those ingredients.
As I said, within the parameters, absolutely any number of scenarios can play out, such is the state of ferment of today’s France. The power wielders in France must realize that they cannot take it for granted that the old conservative linearities and power structures will endure even to the short and medium term.
What we are talking about is an ancient nation in the process of ‘formless flux’. The old certainties that endured for centuries are melting away, but no one knows what shape the recast lead will take.

"I think that there is a sharp contrast for most people between life at university, where they meet lots of people, and the moment when they enter the workforce, when they basically no longer meet anyone. Life becomes dull. So as a result people get married to have a personal life. I could elaborate but I think everyone understands."

Paradoxically that final line, at least in English, likely obfuscated what everyone WOULD have understood had he left it out.

That final line sounds like a modest reference to sex but the man isn’t known for being modest about it and likely wasn’t referring to it.

Everything in the preceding sentences is just as true for males who went to all-male colleges .

Generally speaking, unless you’re high on the food chain, work sucks – and in quite the same way that school sucked for many of the same people while college did not. For the reasons he just presented.

steve sailer and the french savages both worship a dead homosexual jew on a stick wearing a diaper. Steve Sailer, french and the rest of the pigskins should all be exterminated for being dumb, ugly inferior shit

Houellebecq is skillfully trying to manipulate a progressive that accidentally reads the book; the Rediger stuff seems like it’s designed to deny progressives even the pleasure of spite for dragging white Right-ness down with them as they die.

In “Submission” the FN and the Islamic party join together in an anti-Semitic alliance for the first round of the election. That is how Marine Le Pen gets within striking distance of the presidency, not though actually being overwhelmingly popular with the indigenous French.

In his book about H. P. Lovecraft, called “Against the World, Against Life”, Houellebecq says Lovecraft’s central motivation as a writer was racial resentment. Houellebecq is a typical French intellectual: cosmopolitanism, wavering scepticism, and sensuality.

He looked like a nice boy in 2010 while campaigning to win France’s top literary prize.

The article argues that by showing up without teeth on TV, where everyone does their best to make us forget about reality by using every trick to look nice and young and healthy, Houellebecq is a lot more transgressive than the tattoos-and-piercings crowd.

He does have a bit of a punk sensibility. For example, he and Iggy Pop get along great. Here’s a photo:

Houellebecq (pronounced “well-beck”) is never too natty-looking, but it looks like it’s been a particularly stressful month. At right is the more flattering of the two pictures I could find from the Cologne event. (The Guardian’s picture makes him look like he’s been gnawing on human brains.)

It’s pretty obvious that he’s trying to look like Celine, another controversial French writer:

Thanks for posting this, Steve. Unquestionably this book is going to be an important barometer of real-world developments in the time to come–all the more so because the future portrayed is not, strictly speaking, “apocalyptic” in the conventional manner.

I want to commend the reviewer for his “Planet 0f the Apes” comparison: another Frenchman’s speculation, whose kinship to “Camp of the Saints” has grown more apparent to me in recent years.

I would suggest another inspiration/model for the action of “Submission” (as Torn has described it): the conquest of the classical Graeco-Roman world by Christianity. Indeed, with very little tinkering, I can imagine the latter half of the plot superimposed onto an historical novel set in the 4th century A.D., documenting the unlikely replacement of an exhausted Roman administrative state with a more vigorous–but less rational–Christian one.

Perhaps that’s part of the author’s intention? I.e., that such a replacement is happening again precisely because it has happened before. The establishment of a new “Roman empire” in the novel would seem to suggest that this may be so. What, after all, would the transition to a “holy” Roman empire have looked like to a sincere pagan back in A.D. 314?

By the way, I haven’t seen it noted directly, but “submission” is the actual meaning of “islam,” so the novel’s title could be translated simply as “Islam.” Another bit of Houellebecqean mischief?

Houellebecq (pronounced “well-beck”) is never too natty-looking, but it looks like it’s been a particularly stressful month. At right is the more flattering of the two pictures I could find from the Cologne event. (The Guardian’s picture makes him look like he’s been gnawing on human brains.)

It's pretty obvious that he's trying to look like Celine, another controversial French writer:

For American readers, Houlle’s taxonomy of a future Islamic polity would probably be unsatisfying for leaving untouched the question of whether blacks would be brought under control. Yes, speak for yourself and all that. On the one hand, I know several arabs who refer to blacks with the magic word. On the other hand, maybe they’d be captivated by the ‘ol jive, just like the NPR crowd.

I wonder whether Houllebecq had the Persians in mind. Islam was originally not only a religion, but a political revolution complete with its own constitution. Muhammad was not only the Arabs’ prophet, but their George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as well. He was also an Arab nationalist, a sentiment that pervades the Koran.

When I see people who don’t know a thing about the religion denigrating Islam, I’m not sure whether they understand this about Muhammad, or can imagine how beloved he is by the Arab people not only as a religious figure, but a real, human leader, lawgiver and champion of the people.

However, this is also the problem with Islam for non-Arab peoples. The religion isn’t a great fit for non-Arabs. Christianity, at least, drew a clear line between temporal and spiritual power and duties, allowing people to arrange their societies according to their nature.

So, if I remember correctly, Razib Khan was writing recently about the shift in influence in Islam from the Arab to Persianate peoples. What happened was that the Persians, having “submitted” to Islam, set about coopting it, and did so quite effectively. The divide between these two major factions remains to this day.

If there were a European mass conversion to Islam, you’d expect there to be another divide and internal Islamic power struggle, especially if Islam were adopted by “identitaire” Europeans. The idea of resurrecting the Roman empire under Islamic auspices makes this seem plausible, but then again Islam tends to take over existing empires and carve them up – e.g. Persia and Roman Africa – not create new ones. It just doesn’t strike me as a realistic means for creating a new European Imperium. But Houllebecq probably knows this, and is using Islam more as a means to make a point rather than creating a realistic scenario.

Personally, I think he’s right about Christianity, unfortunately. The religion has become chained by its own myths, which are untenable in the modern age. Not to say that myths are absent from the secualr world – they practically define contemporary secular thought – but rather that when an institution changes its primary mission from pursuit of the truth to defending old stories – like pagan Rome – it loses the initiative and will remain on the defensive.

What we forget is that the Christian Church in the West was the main source of both spiritual and intellectual truth and innovation for a very long time. As Houllebecq suggests, the Enlightenment ruined that. But now the Enlightenment ideology has itself taken on the role of defending myths and prosecuting heretics (read the opening chapters of Pinker’s Blank Slate for some background on that — that sly Pinker is one of the most subversive thinkers of our age). What will come to challenge it? Islam? I doubt it, but there has to be something else to take its place, and it has to be a spiritual as well as intellectual movement.

"Personally, I think he’s right about Christianity, unfortunately. The religion has become chained by its own myths, which are untenable in the modern age."

The weakness of Christianity is its almost complete embrace of the new myths (including those that Pinker points out). The old myths have been under open attack since at least the 1700s, but Christianity withstood all of that quite well.

But with everyone from Evangelicals to the most liberal Christians espousing a fervent belief in biological and cultural equalism, wallowing in Western guilt, actively undermining Western civilization by funding enormous refugee resettlement schemes, insisting on the 'morality' of open doors/borders, while increasingly questioning traditional morality, Christianity is chipping away at its own foundation faster than anything external to it ever could.

Gopnik is interesting and perceptive as always, but the kneejerk in parentheses quoted below is so violent as to be funny, leaving aside that the conquest came 250 years after the sack.

On the morning of May 28, 1453, Constantinople was still a Christian city. The next day, it wasn’t. The great churches were turned into great mosques, and the Sultan’s flag flew over the conquered city. (The conquest never would have taken place had the Byzantines not first been fatally weakened by the fraternal Christian sack of the Fourth Crusade.)

Another piece to read while we wait A YEAR for the translation to be published. Maybe I can just try to get my French up to snuff.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/next-thing

Gopnik is interesting and perceptive as always, but the kneejerk in parentheses quoted below is so violent as to be funny, leaving aside that the conquest came 250 years after the sack.

On the morning of May 28, 1453, Constantinople was still a Christian city. The next day, it wasn’t. The great churches were turned into great mosques, and the Sultan’s flag flew over the conquered city. (The conquest never would have taken place had the Byzantines not first been fatally weakened by the fraternal Christian sack of the Fourth Crusade.)

The writing was already on the wall for the Byzantines by 1204. No Fourth Crusade and they maybe would’ve had an additional 50 years or so to go.

“the mainstream parties, trying at all costs to avoid a Front National victory, start negotiations with the Muslim party and end up making huge concessions on education policy in return for retaining temporary control over other critical ministries.”

BTW this is what happened in Northern Ireland in the power-sharing agreement – the Unionists let Sinn Fein take the Education ministry, which mostly deals with the mostly-Protestant state schools, since Catholics pupils generally go to Catholic schools. Sinn Fein was thus able to trash NI’s superior state education system. Totalitarians know that education is vital to the future.

Houellebcq if that is an accurate summation of his latest book, is wrong on nearly every count:

1. The Enlightenment did not fail. Rather, it is the post-Christian NAM-worshiping volk religion of Oprah, Obama, and movies like Avatar, Intouchables, and the Visitor that failed in promoting a Universalist Human brotherhood that would have been anathema to Enlightenment thinkers like Jefferson, Voltaire, or Franklin.

2. Islam appeals mostly to Women, not Men, among Europeans. Women form something like 75-80% of converts in Britain, for example. And look at Ahmed Coulilaby, the Kouchar brothers, the Tsarnaevs. Does anyone think they will “share” any European women or money? Those who will fight will be European men lacking mobility and money to flee — as they will end up castrated slaves at best, dead otherwise. Most European women won’t find Islam so bad — they’ll get dominant men amongst the ruins of modernity, but European men are another matter. The 7th Century Arab conquerors were few in number, their conquered many. Now it is the reverse — the Muslim conquerors will simply kill/castrate (as Imam Choudary often insists) the Kaffir and take his women and stuff.

3. There is no ideological component to this fight — see #2 merely a struggler between European men and women over modernity and all its complaints or sexy domination and poverty; along with Oligarchs wanting to flood Europe with people to avoid Japan-style deflation and erosion of their asset values. PEGIDA are not goose-stepping Nazis longing for the Third Reich — the rallies gained momentum after only a few dozen attending when Muslims in Dresden beat the hell out of carolers. PEGIDA is all about fighting for: Christmas, New Years, wine, schnapps, beer, sausages, dogs, unveiled women, Christmas trees, Christmas carols, and so on. It is tribal just as Islam is all about replicating the the tribes of Pakistan or North Africa.

4. Islam is “Dog Collar for Low IQ populations.” Islam is likely to conquer Europe because of the large number of young men vs. low number of European men, and European women are mostly in favor of it for religious reasons of universal brotherhood and their hate hate hate of nerdy White guys who have the original sin of being unsexy/non-dominant. But it will a continent ruled by guys Ahmed Coulilaby or Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala. There will be nothing but say, Pakistan writ large all over Europe. Fundamentally European men lack the will to fight and kill to keep what is theirs from about 1.5 billion Muslims who want it — and most European women will happily go along at least they get domination.

5. What is wrong with the West is simply, the West. That is modernity, which has unsexy men cooperating and not constantly engaging in a dick-measuring contest that is violent and brutal, with women having their own means and freedom. Women like Cherie Blair and her sister (a convert to Islam) don’t like the messy compromises and lack of dominant men, but this produces science, technology, etc. the envy of the world. Islam produces — nothing. It is a failure so massive it is obvious to see. Modernity means people cooperate freely and don’t need or want tribal structures and constant warring, and women, oligarchs, and religious believers in Post-Christianity all hate that.

The future belongs not to Islam, or the West, but China which has after centuries of failure embraced however unsteadily modernity and stands willing to kill about 1.5 billion Muslims if need be to protect its nation and culture.

6. Identitaire people seem most interested in not being castrated slaves or dead, and keeping their modern society of good medicine, clean water, safe and cheap food, and personal security alive. None of which exist in Muslim societies.

Whiskey, I have to take issue with your characterization of white European and American women as friends of Islam who want nothing more than to punish beta white males and have wanton sex with dusky men.

This just isn't true. White women fantasize about hot blond frat boy "Haven Monahan" being so consumed with lust that he will spend all his considerable powers devising elaborate ways to penetrate them six ways to Sunday. It's so obvious that it's considered camp to even mention it. And can you imagine an Arab girl, sans honor killing threats, turning down Celto-Slavic Tom Brady for 7-11 Ahmed? The truth is that being an attractive northern Euro white guy is about as awesome as it gets in the international dating market.

Our problem isn't so much our women's tastes as it is the profit derived, mainly accruing to cynical men, from pandering to women's sexual instincts and then extracting a fee every time they act on them. It's almost indistinguishable from pornography that way.

F. Roger Devlin understands best of all when he suggests that the most important thing is not to flatten the field for everyone, but rather to let people sort things out as youths and hold them to it.

Neither women nor men can help going for "greener grass" when given the opportunity. So don't give them the opportunity. Build a fence and call it "marriage." Sexual liberation was little more than a stampede when you think of it in those terms. I say use barbed wire and electrify the fence.

"There will be nothing but say, Pakistan writ large all over Europe. Fundamentally European men lack the will to fight and kill to keep what is theirs from about 1.5 billion Muslims who want it — and most European women will happily go along at least they get domination."

It would be hard to come up with sillier nonsense. If history has proven anything at all it has proven that European men certainly do not lack the will to fight and kill. That is why our states keep mainly cracking down on native men, they're much more afraid of the European man than the Muslim and for a good reason. Unfortunately these things tend to turn into self-fulfilling prophecies and trying to ignore growing problems because you're scared of the people offering solutions will often just give you a more radical solution in the end.

The root of the conflict is that European ethics restricts fighting and killing to the state monopoly of violence, Islamic ethics does not. If, say, a bunch of Englishmen had attacked Charlie Hebdo for mocking something important to Englishmen (it is a French satirical, after all), it would be expected for the Prime Minister and the Queen to show up on TV to condemn the atrocity and promise action against whichever faction pulled it off. Most Englishmen would be disgusted as Englishmen will never approve of shooting Frenchmen for some English cause outside the context of a European war with European cultural rules of engagement - but then, if such a war were to happen most Englishmen would be perfectly OK with shooting at Frenchmen for the sake of some English cause.

With Islam nothing works like this. No Muslim organization shows up to assume the responsibility for policing extremists. Islamic terrorists hide behind the fact that Islam isn't organized in a European way of assigning responsibilities. Islam deliberately obfuscates the difference between combatant and civilian. This is all a perfect inverse match for a Europe that's now phobic about assigning "collective responsibility" to minorities. We are in the uncomfortable situation that we see that a war is being waged and a lot of us would fight in it but the enemy doesn't act like a European state power.

Our leaders are reluctant to even acknowledge the conflict because they don't know what to do about it. If no one figures that out in time Western Europe will just fall into a similar situation as much of Eastern Europe with unclear national identities and loyalties and a lot of men who will just choose to fight, damn the consequences. It's not the end of Europe but it's the end of nice clear identities that much of Western Europe had finally figured out (only to demonize them because well-being makes people stupid and they start attacking the ideas that made them successful).

Let me add, a more realistic version of the Islamic Conquest of Europe is a nuclear Iran aids the mass invasion of Europe by half of Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Sub-Saharan Africa, threatening nuclear annihilation of the Europeans do anything to defend themselves (which having effectively disarmed they have only a token nuclear force anway) from mass invasion/migration.

This has precedent — the Barbarian invasions of the Western Roman Empire in the 400 and 500s.

And will remain won’t be Europe. It will simply be the same failure of Egypt, Libya, sub-Saharan Africa etc.

What the French and European establishment do is akin to debating the angels dancing on pins in Constantinople. Absent a strong military able to kill millions of mass migrating people, Muslims WILL conquer Europe. Everything else is nonsense.

It is really stupid to think any Middle Eastern country could even think about attacking Europe. Here is a radical concept: the future is going to be like the past. There is going to be an inexorable introgression of non European genes into the European gene pool, increasingly African ones; and a steady attenuation of that part of the population with two European patents. The economy will slowly decline as society becomes increasingly made up of uncivil and difficult types and western proletarians' jobs are outsourced, while the capitalist conspiracy representing investment banks and the ultra-affluent will continue to run the country for their paymasters' benefit, because they are the only ones who have the skills and resources to be effective in politics.

Let me add, a more realistic version of the Islamic Conquest of Europe is a nuclear Iran aids

Nicely done Whiskey. This is a far more effective way to promote your foreign policy goals than being direct like you usually are. First, get the white guys worked up that they are going to lose their nations because those muslims are going to invade and take their women, who of course just can't wait to jump ship. Then tell them they really won't be able to do anything about this because a nuclear armed Iran will put up a nuclear umbrella to prevent the Europeans from resisting this invasion.

Now, ticked off and angry, those white guys conclude that in order to save Europe they have to first take out Iran and its nukes. In effect you have made Iran "our" problem that needs to be dealt with by us as soon as possible, or all hope for Europe is lost.

Distributism looks back on medieval Europe for inspiration as a result strongly opposes both capitalism and socialism, which are each complimentary products of the Enlightenment. The family replaces the state or the multinational corporation as the key institution in society in a distributist regime.

Distributism is the only path to the future – it is where were most all property (personal, business, and government) is legally owned by local people.

Bigness is killing humanity – big money, big business, big media, and big government are stifling humanity. Having to chose between Rothschild and Castro is a false choice.

Let me add, a more realistic version of the Islamic Conquest of Europe is a nuclear Iran aids the mass invasion of Europe by half of Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Sub-Saharan Africa, threatening nuclear annihilation of the Europeans do anything to defend themselves (which having effectively disarmed they have only a token nuclear force anway) from mass invasion/migration.

This has precedent -- the Barbarian invasions of the Western Roman Empire in the 400 and 500s.

And will remain won't be Europe. It will simply be the same failure of Egypt, Libya, sub-Saharan Africa etc.

What the French and European establishment do is akin to debating the angels dancing on pins in Constantinople. Absent a strong military able to kill millions of mass migrating people, Muslims WILL conquer Europe. Everything else is nonsense.

It is really stupid to think any Middle Eastern country could even think about attacking Europe. Here is a radical concept: the future is going to be like the past. There is going to be an inexorable introgression of non European genes into the European gene pool, increasingly African ones; and a steady attenuation of that part of the population with two European patents. The economy will slowly decline as society becomes increasingly made up of uncivil and difficult types and western proletarians’ jobs are outsourced, while the capitalist conspiracy representing investment banks and the ultra-affluent will continue to run the country for their paymasters’ benefit, because they are the only ones who have the skills and resources to be effective in politics.

Houellebcq if that is an accurate summation of his latest book, is wrong on nearly every count:

1. The Enlightenment did not fail. Rather, it is the post-Christian NAM-worshiping volk religion of Oprah, Obama, and movies like Avatar, Intouchables, and the Visitor that failed in promoting a Universalist Human brotherhood that would have been anathema to Enlightenment thinkers like Jefferson, Voltaire, or Franklin.

2. Islam appeals mostly to Women, not Men, among Europeans. Women form something like 75-80% of converts in Britain, for example. And look at Ahmed Coulilaby, the Kouchar brothers, the Tsarnaevs. Does anyone think they will "share" any European women or money? Those who will fight will be European men lacking mobility and money to flee -- as they will end up castrated slaves at best, dead otherwise. Most European women won't find Islam so bad -- they'll get dominant men amongst the ruins of modernity, but European men are another matter. The 7th Century Arab conquerors were few in number, their conquered many. Now it is the reverse -- the Muslim conquerors will simply kill/castrate (as Imam Choudary often insists) the Kaffir and take his women and stuff.

3. There is no ideological component to this fight -- see #2 merely a struggler between European men and women over modernity and all its complaints or sexy domination and poverty; along with Oligarchs wanting to flood Europe with people to avoid Japan-style deflation and erosion of their asset values. PEGIDA are not goose-stepping Nazis longing for the Third Reich -- the rallies gained momentum after only a few dozen attending when Muslims in Dresden beat the hell out of carolers. PEGIDA is all about fighting for: Christmas, New Years, wine, schnapps, beer, sausages, dogs, unveiled women, Christmas trees, Christmas carols, and so on. It is tribal just as Islam is all about replicating the the tribes of Pakistan or North Africa.

4. Islam is "Dog Collar for Low IQ populations." Islam is likely to conquer Europe because of the large number of young men vs. low number of European men, and European women are mostly in favor of it for religious reasons of universal brotherhood and their hate hate hate of nerdy White guys who have the original sin of being unsexy/non-dominant. But it will a continent ruled by guys Ahmed Coulilaby or Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala. There will be nothing but say, Pakistan writ large all over Europe. Fundamentally European men lack the will to fight and kill to keep what is theirs from about 1.5 billion Muslims who want it -- and most European women will happily go along at least they get domination.

5. What is wrong with the West is simply, the West. That is modernity, which has unsexy men cooperating and not constantly engaging in a dick-measuring contest that is violent and brutal, with women having their own means and freedom. Women like Cherie Blair and her sister (a convert to Islam) don't like the messy compromises and lack of dominant men, but this produces science, technology, etc. the envy of the world. Islam produces -- nothing. It is a failure so massive it is obvious to see. Modernity means people cooperate freely and don't need or want tribal structures and constant warring, and women, oligarchs, and religious believers in Post-Christianity all hate that.

The future belongs not to Islam, or the West, but China which has after centuries of failure embraced however unsteadily modernity and stands willing to kill about 1.5 billion Muslims if need be to protect its nation and culture.

6. Identitaire people seem most interested in not being castrated slaves or dead, and keeping their modern society of good medicine, clean water, safe and cheap food, and personal security alive. None of which exist in Muslim societies.

Whiskey, I have to take issue with your characterization of white European and American women as friends of Islam who want nothing more than to punish beta white males and have wanton sex with dusky men.

This just isn’t true. White women fantasize about hot blond frat boy “Haven Monahan” being so consumed with lust that he will spend all his considerable powers devising elaborate ways to penetrate them six ways to Sunday. It’s so obvious that it’s considered camp to even mention it. And can you imagine an Arab girl, sans honor killing threats, turning down Celto-Slavic Tom Brady for 7-11 Ahmed? The truth is that being an attractive northern Euro white guy is about as awesome as it gets in the international dating market.

Our problem isn’t so much our women’s tastes as it is the profit derived, mainly accruing to cynical men, from pandering to women’s sexual instincts and then extracting a fee every time they act on them. It’s almost indistinguishable from pornography that way.

F. Roger Devlin understands best of all when he suggests that the most important thing is not to flatten the field for everyone, but rather to let people sort things out as youths and hold them to it.

Neither women nor men can help going for “greener grass” when given the opportunity. So don’t give them the opportunity. Build a fence and call it “marriage.” Sexual liberation was little more than a stampede when you think of it in those terms. I say use barbed wire and electrify the fence.

You must live somewhere very remote or live with your eyes tightly shut. But this is about France so let's hear from a prominent French commentator. Eric Zemmour lamented the white proletariat's helplessness before the 'ostentatious virility of their black and Arab competitors seducing numerous young white women.'"

Yes, and from all of these accounts, it strikes me that a major weakness of the book is that Hbecq only considers Islam’s appeal to men. It appeals to women as well. In the wake of the CH massacre, I read that fully a fifth of the Muslims in France are French converts, not a few of them women. They like wearing the burqa, they are relieved of the responsibility of obsessing about their appearance. And this is France!

Also, the nature of the appeal to men is portrayed in completely sexualized ways. Despite what the Heartistas think, men want a sympathetic ear more than anything else. A beautiful woman, if she’s a bitch, can turn ugly, real fast. Moreover, the purpose of women in Islam is to become mothers, not sex machines. He seems to leave all of that out.

Well, I’ll be reading the book when it comes out in English to see if these criticisms are valid.

Well if the French converts are anything like ours, they are going to be either like that gal from Colorado(not surprising) who married a jihadi online or the numerous black converts of the NOI type.

Just frustrated loser types who can't hold normal relationships or hold some insane grudges against the West.

And then lastly there is the bored secularist/Post-Modern type of intellectual like Cherie Blair's sister who falls for Islam Light. That means claiming your a Muslim while only associating with secular whites and retaining all the rights and privileges that Western Civ has to offer.

In general Islam has really no appeal to normal, semi-productive members of the West. Especially to women. Yes there are a few nutjobs and losers - the same sort that is attracted to dark meat and gutter living and who don't mind being slapped around and treated like garbage as part of their lifestyle.

I wonder whether Houllebecq had the Persians in mind. Islam was originally not only a religion, but a political revolution complete with its own constitution. Muhammad was not only the Arabs' prophet, but their George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as well. He was also an Arab nationalist, a sentiment that pervades the Koran.

When I see people who don't know a thing about the religion denigrating Islam, I'm not sure whether they understand this about Muhammad, or can imagine how beloved he is by the Arab people not only as a religious figure, but a real, human leader, lawgiver and champion of the people.

However, this is also the problem with Islam for non-Arab peoples. The religion isn't a great fit for non-Arabs. Christianity, at least, drew a clear line between temporal and spiritual power and duties, allowing people to arrange their societies according to their nature.

So, if I remember correctly, Razib Khan was writing recently about the shift in influence in Islam from the Arab to Persianate peoples. What happened was that the Persians, having "submitted" to Islam, set about coopting it, and did so quite effectively. The divide between these two major factions remains to this day.

If there were a European mass conversion to Islam, you'd expect there to be another divide and internal Islamic power struggle, especially if Islam were adopted by "identitaire" Europeans. The idea of resurrecting the Roman empire under Islamic auspices makes this seem plausible, but then again Islam tends to take over existing empires and carve them up - e.g. Persia and Roman Africa - not create new ones. It just doesn't strike me as a realistic means for creating a new European Imperium. But Houllebecq probably knows this, and is using Islam more as a means to make a point rather than creating a realistic scenario.

Personally, I think he's right about Christianity, unfortunately. The religion has become chained by its own myths, which are untenable in the modern age. Not to say that myths are absent from the secualr world - they practically define contemporary secular thought - but rather that when an institution changes its primary mission from pursuit of the truth to defending old stories - like pagan Rome - it loses the initiative and will remain on the defensive.

What we forget is that the Christian Church in the West was the main source of both spiritual and intellectual truth and innovation for a very long time. As Houllebecq suggests, the Enlightenment ruined that. But now the Enlightenment ideology has itself taken on the role of defending myths and prosecuting heretics (read the opening chapters of Pinker's Blank Slate for some background on that -- that sly Pinker is one of the most subversive thinkers of our age). What will come to challenge it? Islam? I doubt it, but there has to be something else to take its place, and it has to be a spiritual as well as intellectual movement.

“Personally, I think he’s right about Christianity, unfortunately. The religion has become chained by its own myths, which are untenable in the modern age.”

The weakness of Christianity is its almost complete embrace of the new myths (including those that Pinker points out). The old myths have been under open attack since at least the 1700s, but Christianity withstood all of that quite well.

But with everyone from Evangelicals to the most liberal Christians espousing a fervent belief in biological and cultural equalism, wallowing in Western guilt, actively undermining Western civilization by funding enormous refugee resettlement schemes, insisting on the ‘morality’ of open doors/borders, while increasingly questioning traditional morality, Christianity is chipping away at its own foundation faster than anything external to it ever could.

Whiskey, I have to take issue with your characterization of white European and American women as friends of Islam who want nothing more than to punish beta white males and have wanton sex with dusky men.

This just isn't true. White women fantasize about hot blond frat boy "Haven Monahan" being so consumed with lust that he will spend all his considerable powers devising elaborate ways to penetrate them six ways to Sunday. It's so obvious that it's considered camp to even mention it. And can you imagine an Arab girl, sans honor killing threats, turning down Celto-Slavic Tom Brady for 7-11 Ahmed? The truth is that being an attractive northern Euro white guy is about as awesome as it gets in the international dating market.

Our problem isn't so much our women's tastes as it is the profit derived, mainly accruing to cynical men, from pandering to women's sexual instincts and then extracting a fee every time they act on them. It's almost indistinguishable from pornography that way.

F. Roger Devlin understands best of all when he suggests that the most important thing is not to flatten the field for everyone, but rather to let people sort things out as youths and hold them to it.

Neither women nor men can help going for "greener grass" when given the opportunity. So don't give them the opportunity. Build a fence and call it "marriage." Sexual liberation was little more than a stampede when you think of it in those terms. I say use barbed wire and electrify the fence.

You must live somewhere very remote or live with your eyes tightly shut. But this is about France so let’s hear from a prominent French commentator. Eric Zemmour lamented the white proletariat’s helplessness before the ‘ostentatious virility of their black and Arab competitors seducing numerous young white women.’”

The thought of my own men committing treason (as they are doing by interracially marrying en masse—Islam for the record is the perfect religion for those resulting mixed race offspring) because of some boyhood sexual fantasy of domination is disturbing.

It’s also anti-white and anti-Christian and anti-European. That’s the difference between Roosh and my white male friends. Roosh (appreciate and enjoy his writing) ultimately was propelled through life by sex…My white male friends are not. They have lives

As Steve Sailer said, Monogomy is great for Zuckerberg (still a lying rat who stole facebook) because he has a stable partner to support him as he goes off and does bigger and better things.

Polygamy however is best suited for men who want a variety of sex but have few hobbies and passions.

Sex is a need and a means to an end, not a lifestyle. And that’s why Christianity will always win.

So what are you going to do when your Christian church, that you take your daughters to, is welcoming Christian Nigerian families in it? Religion is just part of the indigenous social capital that is the target of integration; immigrants' social capital is not, that is the difference. Whites are going to pursued to their last fastness.

The thought of my own men committing treason (as they are doing by interracially marrying en masse---Islam for the record is the perfect religion for those resulting mixed race offspring) because of some boyhood sexual fantasy of domination is disturbing.

It's also anti-white and anti-Christian and anti-European. That's the difference between Roosh and my white male friends. Roosh (appreciate and enjoy his writing) ultimately was propelled through life by sex...My white male friends are not. They have lives :)

As Steve Sailer said, Monogomy is great for Zuckerberg (still a lying rat who stole facebook) because he has a stable partner to support him as he goes off and does bigger and better things.

Polygamy however is best suited for men who want a variety of sex but have few hobbies and passions.

Sex is a need and a means to an end, not a lifestyle. And that's why Christianity will always win.

So what are you going to do when your Christian church, that you take your daughters to, is welcoming Christian Nigerian families in it? Religion is just part of the indigenous social capital that is the target of integration; immigrants’ social capital is not, that is the difference. Whites are going to pursued to their last fastness.

Yes, and from all of these accounts, it strikes me that a major weakness of the book is that Hbecq only considers Islam's appeal to men. It appeals to women as well. In the wake of the CH massacre, I read that fully a fifth of the Muslims in France are French converts, not a few of them women. They like wearing the burqa, they are relieved of the responsibility of obsessing about their appearance. And this is France!

Also, the nature of the appeal to men is portrayed in completely sexualized ways. Despite what the Heartistas think, men want a sympathetic ear more than anything else. A beautiful woman, if she's a bitch, can turn ugly, real fast. Moreover, the purpose of women in Islam is to become mothers, not sex machines. He seems to leave all of that out.

Well, I'll be reading the book when it comes out in English to see if these criticisms are valid.

Well if the French converts are anything like ours, they are going to be either like that gal from Colorado(not surprising) who married a jihadi online or the numerous black converts of the NOI type.

Just frustrated loser types who can’t hold normal relationships or hold some insane grudges against the West.

And then lastly there is the bored secularist/Post-Modern type of intellectual like Cherie Blair’s sister who falls for Islam Light. That means claiming your a Muslim while only associating with secular whites and retaining all the rights and privileges that Western Civ has to offer.

In general Islam has really no appeal to normal, semi-productive members of the West. Especially to women. Yes there are a few nutjobs and losers – the same sort that is attracted to dark meat and gutter living and who don’t mind being slapped around and treated like garbage as part of their lifestyle.

While publicly the verbal expression of sexual libertinism may be increasingly rewarded, libertine behavior sure isn’t. Indeed, so much about the everyday social world works to reinforce monogamy and the reliable differences between men and women. From sexual violence laws, campus consent codes, all the way to workplace dating policies or norms—it’s as if public life is an ode to the complementary, peaceable, and pivotal relationship between man and woman.

A simple thought experiment ought to reveal how men could tolerate a much more sexualized social system (at least before unanticipated, unpleasant consequences emerge).

Houellebcq if that is an accurate summation of his latest book, is wrong on nearly every count:

1. The Enlightenment did not fail. Rather, it is the post-Christian NAM-worshiping volk religion of Oprah, Obama, and movies like Avatar, Intouchables, and the Visitor that failed in promoting a Universalist Human brotherhood that would have been anathema to Enlightenment thinkers like Jefferson, Voltaire, or Franklin.

2. Islam appeals mostly to Women, not Men, among Europeans. Women form something like 75-80% of converts in Britain, for example. And look at Ahmed Coulilaby, the Kouchar brothers, the Tsarnaevs. Does anyone think they will "share" any European women or money? Those who will fight will be European men lacking mobility and money to flee -- as they will end up castrated slaves at best, dead otherwise. Most European women won't find Islam so bad -- they'll get dominant men amongst the ruins of modernity, but European men are another matter. The 7th Century Arab conquerors were few in number, their conquered many. Now it is the reverse -- the Muslim conquerors will simply kill/castrate (as Imam Choudary often insists) the Kaffir and take his women and stuff.

3. There is no ideological component to this fight -- see #2 merely a struggler between European men and women over modernity and all its complaints or sexy domination and poverty; along with Oligarchs wanting to flood Europe with people to avoid Japan-style deflation and erosion of their asset values. PEGIDA are not goose-stepping Nazis longing for the Third Reich -- the rallies gained momentum after only a few dozen attending when Muslims in Dresden beat the hell out of carolers. PEGIDA is all about fighting for: Christmas, New Years, wine, schnapps, beer, sausages, dogs, unveiled women, Christmas trees, Christmas carols, and so on. It is tribal just as Islam is all about replicating the the tribes of Pakistan or North Africa.

4. Islam is "Dog Collar for Low IQ populations." Islam is likely to conquer Europe because of the large number of young men vs. low number of European men, and European women are mostly in favor of it for religious reasons of universal brotherhood and their hate hate hate of nerdy White guys who have the original sin of being unsexy/non-dominant. But it will a continent ruled by guys Ahmed Coulilaby or Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala. There will be nothing but say, Pakistan writ large all over Europe. Fundamentally European men lack the will to fight and kill to keep what is theirs from about 1.5 billion Muslims who want it -- and most European women will happily go along at least they get domination.

5. What is wrong with the West is simply, the West. That is modernity, which has unsexy men cooperating and not constantly engaging in a dick-measuring contest that is violent and brutal, with women having their own means and freedom. Women like Cherie Blair and her sister (a convert to Islam) don't like the messy compromises and lack of dominant men, but this produces science, technology, etc. the envy of the world. Islam produces -- nothing. It is a failure so massive it is obvious to see. Modernity means people cooperate freely and don't need or want tribal structures and constant warring, and women, oligarchs, and religious believers in Post-Christianity all hate that.

The future belongs not to Islam, or the West, but China which has after centuries of failure embraced however unsteadily modernity and stands willing to kill about 1.5 billion Muslims if need be to protect its nation and culture.

6. Identitaire people seem most interested in not being castrated slaves or dead, and keeping their modern society of good medicine, clean water, safe and cheap food, and personal security alive. None of which exist in Muslim societies.

“There will be nothing but say, Pakistan writ large all over Europe. Fundamentally European men lack the will to fight and kill to keep what is theirs from about 1.5 billion Muslims who want it — and most European women will happily go along at least they get domination.”

It would be hard to come up with sillier nonsense. If history has proven anything at all it has proven that European men certainly do not lack the will to fight and kill. That is why our states keep mainly cracking down on native men, they’re much more afraid of the European man than the Muslim and for a good reason. Unfortunately these things tend to turn into self-fulfilling prophecies and trying to ignore growing problems because you’re scared of the people offering solutions will often just give you a more radical solution in the end.

The root of the conflict is that European ethics restricts fighting and killing to the state monopoly of violence, Islamic ethics does not. If, say, a bunch of Englishmen had attacked Charlie Hebdo for mocking something important to Englishmen (it is a French satirical, after all), it would be expected for the Prime Minister and the Queen to show up on TV to condemn the atrocity and promise action against whichever faction pulled it off. Most Englishmen would be disgusted as Englishmen will never approve of shooting Frenchmen for some English cause outside the context of a European war with European cultural rules of engagement – but then, if such a war were to happen most Englishmen would be perfectly OK with shooting at Frenchmen for the sake of some English cause.

With Islam nothing works like this. No Muslim organization shows up to assume the responsibility for policing extremists. Islamic terrorists hide behind the fact that Islam isn’t organized in a European way of assigning responsibilities. Islam deliberately obfuscates the difference between combatant and civilian. This is all a perfect inverse match for a Europe that’s now phobic about assigning “collective responsibility” to minorities. We are in the uncomfortable situation that we see that a war is being waged and a lot of us would fight in it but the enemy doesn’t act like a European state power.

Our leaders are reluctant to even acknowledge the conflict because they don’t know what to do about it. If no one figures that out in time Western Europe will just fall into a similar situation as much of Eastern Europe with unclear national identities and loyalties and a lot of men who will just choose to fight, damn the consequences. It’s not the end of Europe but it’s the end of nice clear identities that much of Western Europe had finally figured out (only to demonize them because well-being makes people stupid and they start attacking the ideas that made them successful).

Let me add, a more realistic version of the Islamic Conquest of Europe is a nuclear Iran aids the mass invasion of Europe by half of Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Sub-Saharan Africa, threatening nuclear annihilation of the Europeans do anything to defend themselves (which having effectively disarmed they have only a token nuclear force anway) from mass invasion/migration.

This has precedent -- the Barbarian invasions of the Western Roman Empire in the 400 and 500s.

And will remain won't be Europe. It will simply be the same failure of Egypt, Libya, sub-Saharan Africa etc.

What the French and European establishment do is akin to debating the angels dancing on pins in Constantinople. Absent a strong military able to kill millions of mass migrating people, Muslims WILL conquer Europe. Everything else is nonsense.

Let me add, a more realistic version of the Islamic Conquest of Europe is a nuclear Iran aids

Nicely done Whiskey. This is a far more effective way to promote your foreign policy goals than being direct like you usually are. First, get the white guys worked up that they are going to lose their nations because those muslims are going to invade and take their women, who of course just can’t wait to jump ship. Then tell them they really won’t be able to do anything about this because a nuclear armed Iran will put up a nuclear umbrella to prevent the Europeans from resisting this invasion.

Now, ticked off and angry, those white guys conclude that in order to save Europe they have to first take out Iran and its nukes. In effect you have made Iran “our” problem that needs to be dealt with by us as soon as possible, or all hope for Europe is lost.

Well if the French converts are anything like ours, they are going to be either like that gal from Colorado(not surprising) who married a jihadi online or the numerous black converts of the NOI type.

Just frustrated loser types who can't hold normal relationships or hold some insane grudges against the West.

And then lastly there is the bored secularist/Post-Modern type of intellectual like Cherie Blair's sister who falls for Islam Light. That means claiming your a Muslim while only associating with secular whites and retaining all the rights and privileges that Western Civ has to offer.

In general Islam has really no appeal to normal, semi-productive members of the West. Especially to women. Yes there are a few nutjobs and losers - the same sort that is attracted to dark meat and gutter living and who don't mind being slapped around and treated like garbage as part of their lifestyle.

I’m no expert, but it struck me that the women were mostly normal women who married Muslim men. Not like the batshit Lydia Booth types. The men were mostly losers.

You must live somewhere very remote or live with your eyes tightly shut. But this is about France so let's hear from a prominent French commentator. Eric Zemmour lamented the white proletariat's helplessness before the 'ostentatious virility of their black and Arab competitors seducing numerous young white women.'"

Zemmour would say that, as he doesn’t look northern European himself and identifies as a Berber Jew. He looks less white than Zidane.

From an HBD viewpoint why would one be surprised at men from a historically polygynous population out-seducing men from a population that evolved under resource-obligate monogamy ("Western European Marriage Pattern: men and women married relatively late and many never married")?

@"If history has proven anything at all it has proven that European men certainly do not lack the will to fight and kill" and "That is why our states keep mainly cracking down on native men, they’re much more afraid of the European man than the Muslim and for a good reason"

That would require white social capital, but it is ceaselessly targeted for destruction by a state that is intent on integration; the reaction you talk about is smothered out of existence. France's encouragement of immigration, at that time from southern Europe, started after WW1. Having had the stuffing knocked out of it for the second time, the country decided it needed to boost its population.France,like other states, operates to preserve the state's position as such, not to preserve the population that created it. "CANADA recently lifted its target for new permanent residents from 265,000 a year to 285,000. Chris Alexander, minister for immigration, says he expected a fuss when the announcement was made in October. It never came. “People thought it was the right thing to do... The new Canadians are younger and better educated than ever before, boasts Mr Alexander. “Our immigrants have a much higher incidence of post-secondary degrees than the Canadian population at large,” ”

The ideologically motivated war by whites against whites (for blacks) that virtually destroyed the US South, is a powerful counter to the thesis that whites will try to run a country to benefit themselves. They will turn on those who do.

Let me add, a more realistic version of the Islamic Conquest of Europe is a nuclear Iran aids

Nicely done Whiskey. This is a far more effective way to promote your foreign policy goals than being direct like you usually are. First, get the white guys worked up that they are going to lose their nations because those muslims are going to invade and take their women, who of course just can't wait to jump ship. Then tell them they really won't be able to do anything about this because a nuclear armed Iran will put up a nuclear umbrella to prevent the Europeans from resisting this invasion.

Now, ticked off and angry, those white guys conclude that in order to save Europe they have to first take out Iran and its nukes. In effect you have made Iran "our" problem that needs to be dealt with by us as soon as possible, or all hope for Europe is lost.

Houellebecq seems to be familiar with the only twentieth century ideology that never gained control of a state: Tradition. If you have never heard of it, that is probably a good thing. That means it remains unpopular. However, it seems to be gaining traction. Despite claims to the contrary, Tradition is as modern an ideology as any. The most famous proponents were Baron Julius Evola, and René Guénon. By the way, Guénon was one of the first to decide that Islam was the only way to save Europe, and he converted to Sufism.

Here is the best paragraph description I know of Tradition, written in 2002.

Evola represents a segment of the Right that is simultaneously anti-socialist, anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, and anti-Christian. It is even, to some degree, anti-national. Though sometimes associated with the German “Conservative Revolution” (an association of which Evola approved), there is nothing very conservative about this Traditionalism. As Evola himself acknowledged, little now deserves to be preserved. Tradition is as revolutionary a doctrine as any that has appeared since the 18th century.

In the best French tradition, it isn’t really clear whether Houellebecq is advocating for Tradition or criticizing it. Maybe he is hedging his bets?

1. For making that connection explicit. I was thinking about Tradition [to which idea I was introduced long ago by reading John Reilly's site] and wondering whether Houellebecq was being pro or con throughout Torn and Frayed's review. Glad to not be the only one.

2. For that link. Overjoyed to see someone archiving Reilly's outstanding work. His was one of the most preservation-worthy blogs of the turn of the millennium and its first decade. I'm sorry I never downloaded the whole site. Reilly's illness and eventual death deprived us of an intelligent and humane observer whose thinking would have suited this decade just as well.

Houellebecq (pronounced “well-beck”) is never too natty-looking, but it looks like it’s been a particularly stressful month. At right is the more flattering of the two pictures I could find from the Cologne event. (The Guardian’s picture makes him look like he’s been gnawing on human brains.)

It's pretty obvious that he's trying to look like Celine, another controversial French writer:

Reminds me of the cannibalistic, troglodyte Bean family of medieval Scotland, who apparently waylaid travellers back to their cave, killed and ate them and pickled body parts for later use.
Apparently a medieval throwback to ancient Pictish/Celtic European fringe behavior patterns as revealed by archaeology. Something to do with wild men wild genes and the pushing to the fringe of ancient types by later invaders.
The same ancient instinct was, apparently, awakened in the famous case of Burke and Hare in the 19th century.

Houellebecq seems to be familiar with the only twentieth century ideology that never gained control of a state: Tradition. If you have never heard of it, that is probably a good thing. That means it remains unpopular. However, it seems to be gaining traction. Despite claims to the contrary, Tradition is as modern an ideology as any. The most famous proponents were Baron Julius Evola, and René Guénon. By the way, Guénon was one of the first to decide that Islam was the only way to save Europe, and he converted to Sufism.

Here is the best paragraph description I know of Tradition, written in 2002.

Evola represents a segment of the Right that is simultaneously anti-socialist, anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, and anti-Christian. It is even, to some degree, anti-national. Though sometimes associated with the German "Conservative Revolution" (an association of which Evola approved), there is nothing very conservative about this Traditionalism. As Evola himself acknowledged, little now deserves to be preserved. Tradition is as revolutionary a doctrine as any that has appeared since the 18th century.

In the best French tradition, it isn't really clear whether Houellebecq is advocating for Tradition or criticizing it. Maybe he is hedging his bets?

Thank you Sir!

On two counts.

1. For making that connection explicit. I was thinking about Tradition [to which idea I was introduced long ago by reading John Reilly's site] and wondering whether Houellebecq was being pro or con throughout Torn and Frayed’s review. Glad to not be the only one.

2. For that link. Overjoyed to see someone archiving Reilly’s outstanding work. His was one of the most preservation-worthy blogs of the turn of the millennium and its first decade. I’m sorry I never downloaded the whole site. Reilly’s illness and eventual death deprived us of an intelligent and humane observer whose thinking would have suited this decade just as well.

Zemmour would say that, as he doesn't look northern European himself and identifies as a Berber Jew. He looks less white than Zidane.

From an HBD viewpoint why would one be surprised at men from a historically polygynous population out-seducing men from a population that evolved under resource-obligate monogamy (“Western European Marriage Pattern: men and women married relatively late and many never married”)?

@”If history has proven anything at all it has proven that European men certainly do not lack the will to fight and kill” and “That is why our states keep mainly cracking down on native men, they’re much more afraid of the European man than the Muslim and for a good reason”

That would require white social capital, but it is ceaselessly targeted for destruction by a state that is intent on integration; the reaction you talk about is smothered out of existence. France’s encouragement of immigration, at that time from southern Europe, started after WW1. Having had the stuffing knocked out of it for the second time, the country decided it needed to boost its population.France,like other states, operates to preserve the state’s position as such, not to preserve the population that created it. “CANADA recently lifted its target for new permanent residents from 265,000 a year to 285,000. Chris Alexander, minister for immigration, says he expected a fuss when the announcement was made in October. It never came. “People thought it was the right thing to do… The new Canadians are younger and better educated than ever before, boasts Mr Alexander. “Our immigrants have a much higher incidence of post-secondary degrees than the Canadian population at large,” ”

The ideologically motivated war by whites against whites (for blacks) that virtually destroyed the US South, is a powerful counter to the thesis that whites will try to run a country to benefit themselves. They will turn on those who do.

From an HBD viewpoint why would one be surprised at men from a historically polygynous population out-seducing men from a population that evolved under resource-obligate monogamy ("Western European Marriage Pattern: men and women married relatively late and many never married")?

@"If history has proven anything at all it has proven that European men certainly do not lack the will to fight and kill" and "That is why our states keep mainly cracking down on native men, they’re much more afraid of the European man than the Muslim and for a good reason"

That would require white social capital, but it is ceaselessly targeted for destruction by a state that is intent on integration; the reaction you talk about is smothered out of existence. France's encouragement of immigration, at that time from southern Europe, started after WW1. Having had the stuffing knocked out of it for the second time, the country decided it needed to boost its population.France,like other states, operates to preserve the state's position as such, not to preserve the population that created it. "CANADA recently lifted its target for new permanent residents from 265,000 a year to 285,000. Chris Alexander, minister for immigration, says he expected a fuss when the announcement was made in October. It never came. “People thought it was the right thing to do... The new Canadians are younger and better educated than ever before, boasts Mr Alexander. “Our immigrants have a much higher incidence of post-secondary degrees than the Canadian population at large,” ”

The ideologically motivated war by whites against whites (for blacks) that virtually destroyed the US South, is a powerful counter to the thesis that whites will try to run a country to benefit themselves. They will turn on those who do.

From an HBD viewpoint why would one be surprised at a man from a historically polygynous population promoting the notion of the virility of men from historically polygynous populations?

1. For making that connection explicit. I was thinking about Tradition [to which idea I was introduced long ago by reading John Reilly's site] and wondering whether Houellebecq was being pro or con throughout Torn and Frayed's review. Glad to not be the only one.

2. For that link. Overjoyed to see someone archiving Reilly's outstanding work. His was one of the most preservation-worthy blogs of the turn of the millennium and its first decade. I'm sorry I never downloaded the whole site. Reilly's illness and eventual death deprived us of an intelligent and humane observer whose thinking would have suited this decade just as well.

[…] and German (an English translation is scheduled for September 2015), yours truly had to rely on this little compilation of reviews by Steve Sailer for enlightenment (yours truly was not about to spend upwards of 22 EUR on the […]